Housing bosses hold festival parade for East End’s new life’

PUBLISHED: 19:40 22 August 2008 | UPDATED: 13:33 05 October 2010

HOUSING bosses are holding a anniversary street festival with a big parade through a once-dilapidated corner of London’s East End on Saturday (Aug 23) to mark a decade of regeneration. The parade goes through Poplar’s Chrisp Street Market, off East India Dock-road, and heads for Bartlett Park nearby, where Poplar Housing & Regeneration Community Association stages its 10th anniversary family festival. It begins with 200 performers in the market at 11.30am, then winds through the streets to converge on the main stage to open the five-hour free festival in the park at 12 noon

It begins with 200 performers in the market at 11.30am which then winds its way through the streets of the huge Lansbury Estate before converging on the main stage to open the five-hour free festival in the park at 12 noon.

Attractions include "a dastardly fusion of eastern melodies and sultry London beats," musicians playing Indian tabla, Armenian 'duduk' and Flamenco guitar, a dance troupe fusing Salsa and Congolese rumba, others blending hip-hop, drum'n'bass and ragga with jazz and funk, and an eight-piece band playing funk, ska, Latin and boogaloo.

But for those finding duduk, flamenco, ragga, funk, ska and boogaloo perhaps a little too energetic, there's a more gentile tea dance being laid on.

For the family, there are fairground rides, toddlers' play area, kids' climbing wall, skate ramp and archery, arts and craft... and, of course, plenty of food such as Hoxton Beach falafels, tea, cake and hot dogs.

The event marks the association's 10th anniversary and the beginning of Poplar's regeneration, especially now in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics just up the road at Stratford.

The association manages 8,400 homes on eight former Tower Hamlets council estates and is building another 500 with Whitehall cash to tackle Poplar's overcrowding. The revamp also includes nine community centres.

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